With 189 member countries, staff from more 170 countries, and offices in over 130 locations, the World Bank Group is a unique global partnership: five institutions working for sustainable solutions that reduce poverty and build shared prosperity in developing countries.

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The World Bank Group works in every major area of development. We provide a wide array of financial products and technical assistance, and we help countries share and apply innovative knowledge and solutions to the challenges they face.

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Global data and statistics, research and publications, and topics in poverty and development

We face big challenges to help the world’s poorest people and ensure that everyone sees benefits from economic growth. Data and research help us understand these challenges and set priorities, share knowledge of what works, and measure progress.

City Creditworthiness Initiative: A Partnership to Deliver Municipal Finance

Access to financing is a major hurdle to sustainable urban development. The World Bank's City Creditworthiness Initiative helps cities improve their financial performance and secure the private investment they need to fund climate-smart infrastructure and services.

Cities across the world are growing and polluting to unprecedented levels. The World Bank estimates that cities will attract an additional 2 billion people by 2050, and will produce well over 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Already under pressure, infrastructure and basic services such as transport, solid waste management, education or sanitation will need to be expanded significantly in order to serve these growing populations.

The investment required is immense: developing countries need an extra $1.3 trillion of investment in public infrastructure a year just to keep pace. Traditional sources of financing from central governments and international aid organizations won’t be nearly sufficient to meet the demand. Cities will need to innovate and access private sources of long-term financing through local capital markets and commercial partnerships.

However, in order to attract investment from private sources cities need to first be creditworthy. They need to manage finances, plan development and engage citizens using methods that emphasize sustainability and transparency. Recent estimates show that less than 20% of the largest 500 cities in developing countries are deemed creditworthy in their local context, severely constricting their capacity to finance investments in public infrastructure.

Supporting cities on the path to creditworthiness is the crucial first step in unlocking the larger, longer-term, sustainable investments that will provide critical services to resident populations and foster green growth through climate-smart urban development.

Helping local and municipal governments access financing has become an integral part of the World Bank’s sustainable urban development strategy. To that end, the Bank has developed the City Creditworthiness Initiative to provide local authorities with comprehensive, hands-on, and long-term support and help them:

Develop an enabling legal and regulatory, institutional, and policy framework for responsible sub-national borrowing through reforms at the national level;

Improve the “demand” side of financing by developing sound, climate-smart projects that foster green growth;

Improve the “supply” side of financing by engaging with private sector investors.

The City Creditworthiness Initiative is comprised of two primary components:

City Creditworthiness Academies are hands-on learning programs that teach city leaders the fundamentals of creditworthiness and municipal finance, including issues determined by the enabling environment and options for financing: revenue management and enhancement; expenditure control and asset maintenance; capital investment planning; debt management; and, scoping out options for financing. Using a preliminary self-assessment tool, participants develop a customized preliminary action plan of specific institutional reforms, capacity building, and other actions that will improve their creditworthiness and their ability to plan, finance and deliver infrastructure services. (See our self-assessment tool used by cities at our academies at www.citycred.org)

The Academies serve as the launching point for City Creditworthiness Implementation Programs: In-depth, multi-year, on-the-job, customized technical assistance programs to help them prepare for, structure, and close market-based financing transactions for climate-smart infrastructure projects, using local currency markets whenever possible. The range of interventions is wide, encompassing everything from improving national legal and regulatory frameworks, to increasing the use of data in decision- and policy-making, improving revenue collection and management systems, and reforming capital improvement planning and budgeting.

The Initiative has set the ambitious goal of assisting 300 cities in 60 low- and middle-income countries on the path to green growth and creditworthiness. So far, over 650 senior financial and urban planning officers have participated in City Creditworthiness Academies, representing a total of 261 local authorities across 30 different countries. Each of these participant cities have completed a creditworthiness self-assessment, highlighted their core creditworthiness challenges and also created a detailed, customized action plan. To see more on our most recent Academies, please consult the following links:

For many cities an Academy is just the beginning of an extended program of targeted creditworthiness technical assistance. Cities in low-income countries across our Africa region engagements have benefitted from the targeted advisory services the program can offer.

The City Creditworthiness Initiative was conceived to coordinate and integrate existing efforts, instruments, knowledge and resources by identifying the most effective solutions and implementation arrangements for sub-national entities. For that reason, the Initiative is being implemented by the World Bank Group in close cooperation with a growing network of partner agencies, including:

The Korean Green Growth Partnership: the Partnership strengthens the cooperation between the Government of Korea and the World Bank Group to develop and share innovative green growth solutions with developing countries.

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